Hmmm, given all the Stormtroopers, Bucket Helmets, and Wagnerian Film Score (not to mention numerous interviews with Lucas ), I thought it was an obvious allegory for Nazi's/French Vichy vs the Underground Resistance. I haven't read the book you mentioned Eldorion, but I know Lucas himself talks about being inspired by the events of WW2 in nearly every interview he's given. This is the first I've ever heard that he was inspired by the events of Vietnam, though it's certainly plausible that he might have also been inspired by North Vietnamese villagers fighting against the Imperial Armies of the US .

PS: HAN SHOT FIRST

GB

That's a good point about WWII, especially with design. There was nothing stopping Lucas from drawing inspiration from multiple sources though, of course.

I can definitely see a sort of "resistance" them going through the OT, particularly in light of Revenge of the Sith (and its novelization) and the origins of the rebellion from the loyalist faction of the Old Republic.

Actually now i remember it i watched a documentary on the making of A new hope ,and apparently during the first very early screening George Lucas showed to Steven Spielberg he used old footage of WWII aircraft getting shot down in the Death Star attack scene(instead of X-wings etc), obvious homage there.

I ’m a big fan of Star Wars.

- *sniffs*
- "What do you smell?"
- "SPAMMERFLESH!!one!"
- "They've picked up our trail!"

Who knows though, maybe we'll have another inadvertent deep discussion come of this.

Someone (methinks Durin) has deleted the spammer and me looks silly.

Yes, I am no longer alone .

GB

You're not alone. You have each other.

Thing I disliked most about the later 3 SW films was the treatment of the Force. Either I missed it somewhere or there was no hint in the first 3 films to it being in the blood. The mystical, quasi-religious Force of the first films was one of the big factors on me as an impressionable child , to have all that mysticism seemingly trashed by turning it into a matter of biology ruined a lot for me.
On the point of WW2 I have long thought WW2 films have been an inspiration, the attack on the Death Star has nods to the Dambusters and the fantastic David Lean film about Battle of Britain- whose title I cant remember!
I also thought they wasted one of the few genuinely good characters they invented for the later films- Darth Maul, I would have much preferred him to have survived till the end of the second trilogy as a potential rival to Vader and we could have had a final Vader betrayal of his fellow Darth and a Dark side battle to decide it.
One other point- Watch the films again carefully and you will see who the true holder of the Force in the films is. Someone who is handily in all the right places at all the right points in history, someone who can easily cross a corridor full of laser fire and be sure of never being hit, someone who arranges for Luke to meet Kenobi and is pivotal, present, but rarely at the forefront throughout, orchestrating events with a subtle and cheeky finesse- R2 D2.

Everyone knows that R2D2 and C3P0 are the REAL central characters at the heart of the series .

WW2 films didn't just inspire, the special effects team filmed the space battles to precisely match air battle scenes from those films.

As to the hated "Midichlorians" (and who doesn't hate them ?), they don't actually have anything to do with the Force being "in the blood". As explained in the films, a high Midichlorian count was merely an indicator that someone had a powerful Qi. A low count would indicate a low amount of the Force. They don't actually generate the Force. Think of them like white blood cells, a high count indicates that your immune system is responding to a disease. Midichlorians respond to the bodies energy levels.

Ooooh, I TOTALLY agree that Darth Maul was an utter waste of a great character.

GB